Palliative care facility due for completion next April

Construction of the new Albany Community Hospice adjacent to Albany Health Campus is expected to be complete by April next year, with Regional Development Minister Terry Redman visiting the site on Tuesday.

The new eight-bed hospice, built with $4.78 million in Royalties for Regions funding, will replace the current four-bed hospice, commissioned in 2002.

Albany Community Hospice interim chairwoman Kate Clarke said in 2014 there were 140 admissions to the hospice.

"If you look at what that means to families, carers and friends and people who are suffering from life-ending illnesses, it is quite significant," she said.

"This is an opportunity to have a facility in the country where people can receive really good care at that end stage in life."

Ms Clarke said she was looking forward to the completion of the building next year, followed by an extensive accreditation process.

Mr Redman said having the hospice closer to the health campus meant palliative care patients would have timely access to priority health services with minimal disruption to regular care.

He said the hospice development would go some way to ensuring the region's ageing population could receive appropriate care in their own community.

"Sometimes we forget the importance … of social support and infrastructure support that make communities such that people are happy to stay in those regions," he said.

"This development is one such service that, if it's not provided in the community, they have to go somewhere else."

Mr Redman said an extra $500,000 in Royalties for Regions funding had been negotiated for the project after contamination issues at the site blew out the budget.

"When the original budget was made through, there was a couple of things that popped up later on that we didn't anticipate, so there was nearly half-a-million dollars of unanticipated costs," he said.

"(The Great Southern Development Commission) drove the argument to make sure we got that under the table.

"A lot of people have put a lot of effort in … to make this work."

Local companies Wauters Enterprises and H+H Architects are involved in the construction.

The hospice, which is built on State land for a peppercorn rent, is one of only two private hospices in WA.